BibLaTeX with elsarticle

Problem

I like BibLaTeX and StackOverflow presents some ways reasons to switch to BibLaTeX. I like it, if nothing else, I can have multiple bibliographies easily. I can also use natbib citation style and also limit which fields are displayed in my bibliography. One problem with BibLaTeX is that it does not work well with Elsevier articles (class elsarticle), since natbib is loaded by default. There are some other options to induce compatibility are presented here and here.

Solution

So I edited the elsarticle.cls file to make it work. See the diff between the 2 files here:

diff elsarticle.cls elsarticle_nonatbib.cls

27c27
<  \def\RCSfile{elsarticle}%
---
>  \def\RCSfile{elsarticle_nonatbib}%
33c33
<  \def\@shortjid{elsarticle}
---
>  \def\@shortjid{elsarticle_nonatbib}
192,193c192,193
< \newcounter{author}
< \def\author{\@ifnextchar[{\@@author}{\@author}}
---
> \newcounter{auth}
> \def\auth{\@ifnextchar[{\@@auth}{\@auth}}
196c196
< \def\@@author[#1]#2{\g@addto@macro\elsauthors{%
---
> \def\@@auth[#1]#2{\g@addto@macro\elsauthors{%
211c211
< \def\@author#1{\g@addto@macro\elsauthors{\normalsize%
---
> \def\@auth#1{\g@addto@macro\elsauthors{\normalsize%
642c642
< \RequirePackage[\@biboptions]{natbib}
---
> %\RequirePackage[\@biboptions]{natbib}

If you've never read a diff output, the < means what's written in the first file (elsarticle.cls) and > means the second file (elsarticle_nonatbib.cls). The numbers correspond to the line in each file, e.g 192c193 means line 192 in file 1 and 193 in file 2.
Overall, I changed the type of article, commented out the natbib requirement, and changed the author field to auth (see below for why). The edited cls is located here.

Things you need to change

The \author field conflicts with biblatex and elsarticle, so you must chagne the \author definitions to \auth instead. This is a minor change, but important one. You can change that field to anything you want in the elsarticle_nonatbib.cls file (such as elsauthor).

Minimal Working Example (MWE)

I tried it with Elsevier's sample manuscript, changing the author fields to auth, and adding a biblatex-type heading:

\usepackage[
  natbib = true,
    backend=bibtex,
    isbn=false,
    url=false,
    doi=false,
    eprint=false,
    style=numeric,
    sorting=nyt,
    sortcites = true
]{biblatex}
\bibliography{mybibfile}

and

\printbibliography

at the end, and the manuscript came out as if using natbib. The MWE is located here and output PDF is located here.

Conclusion

You can use elsarticle with biblatex, with some minor changes. You may have to include this cls with the rest of your LaTeX files for them to compile on the editors machine. Maybe Elsevier will change the LaTeX for more flexibility, but the StackOverflow question was asked 3 years ago and not much seems to have changed, so I like my solution.

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